The Book of Jakarta
SynopsisPlot
A young woman takes a driverless taxi through the streets of Jakarta, only to discover that the destination she is hurtling towards is now entirely submerged... A group of elderly women visit a famous amusement park for one last ride, but things don’t go quite according to plan... The day before her wedding, a bride risks everything to meet her former lover at their favourite seafood restaurant on the other side of the tracks... Despite being the world’s fourth-largest nation—made up of over 17,000 islands— very little of Indonesian history and contemporary politics are known to outsiders. From feudal states and sultanates to a Cold War killing field and a now struggling, flawed democracy, the country’s political history, as well as its literature, defies easy explanation. Like Indonesia itself, the capital city Jakarta is a multiplicity; irreducible, unpredictable, and full of surprises. Traversing the different neighbourhoods and districts, the stories gathered here attempt to capture the essence of contemporary Jakarta and its writing, as well as the ever-changing landscape of the fastest-sinking city in the world.
Story
About this book
The Book of Jakarta is a short fiction anthology featuring work by eight Indonesian writers. Each story is set in or around the Indonesian capital, a city of roughly ten million people spread across a coastal plain on the island of Java. The collection moves between neighborhoods and districts, following characters whose lives reflect the contradictions of a fast-changing metropolis. One story follows a young woman in a driverless taxi heading toward a destination that has been swallowed by rising water. Another tracks a group of elderly women on a final visit to a well-known amusement park. A third centers on a bride who, the day before her wedding, crosses the city to meet a former lover at a seafood restaurant.
Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country and spans more than 17,000 islands, yet its literature remains relatively unfamiliar outside the region. The anthology draws on that gap, presenting contemporary urban fiction rooted in a city whose political and physical landscape keeps shifting. Jakarta is widely cited as one of the fastest-sinking cities on Earth, with parts of its northern coast subsiding due to groundwater extraction. Several of the stories engage with that precariousness, placing everyday human decisions against a backdrop of environmental and social uncertainty.
